Magik Minion Slayer

I have been on a kick of playing Aggression lately and specifically have been enjoying minion slaying decks coupled with Hall of Heroes. HoH can be tough to use, need to take out at least 3 minions and then have to flip to AE to get your card draw. How does Magik play into this?

The Idea:

Magik does not inherently like minions so why the strategy for minion slaying/HoH?

-Well Magik has 3 in kit readies with Stepping Disc which even with her base attack allows her to deal with minions fairly easily. We will be boosting her attack in this build to make dealing with them even easier.

-You also need to be able to flip safely to AE to trigger HoH and even though Magik's base thwart is not good. She has access to Exorcism which has really solid threat removal as well as the ability to confuse allowing for safe flips.

-Magik also has a good response when flipping back to hero, she can grab a spell card from discard. Couple that with triggering HoH and you will have a 9 card hand as well as the spell you wanted top deck.

-As with any Magik deck, we want Limbo out ASAP so that we can manipulate the top of our deck and power our strategy. Build Support is included and can grab HoH or the X-jet once Limbo is out.

The Strategy:

What we are aiming to do here is build up Magik's attack with upgrades and then summon minions for her to take out which can also net us some overkill as well as healing, filling up HoH to flip down and get huge hand sizes. Use Stepping Disc to recur Exorcism and keep threat down as well as hit confuses when needed.

To supplement Magik's attack, we have:

Hand Cannon which can be exhausted to give +2 attack and trigger overkill.

Combat Training gives +1 attack.

Warrior Skill can have a counter removed to give +1 attack, note that this can also be used with attack events as well as be used multiple times in a turn. Great for turns with stepping disc.

Soulsword gives piercing and +1 attack if we have a or resource top deck which we can manipulate to ensure that we do.

Both Soulsword and Hand Cannon can be found with Lock and Load.

With all the upgrades out, Magik can hit for 7 with one attack and trigger overkill onto the villain. We can also use Moment of Triumph after defeating an enemy and for every point of excess dealt, we can heal 1 damage.

It is very common to hit a minion for 7 and deal 3 overkill damage, heal 3 from moment of triumph then also get a ready from stepping disc and attack the villain for another 4. Exorcism can be played to confuse the villain and flip down safely. Soul Strike can also be played to stun the villain giving another turn to get set up.

To bring out minions, we have:

Looking for Trouble which discards until we get a minion and removes 3 threat from the main.

Angela lets you search the top 10 cards of the encounter deck for a minion.

Face the Past lets us grab or nemesis minion, ready up and draw 3 cards.

One of the fun things about moment of triumph is that we can get the heal even if we use an attack event as opposed to our basic attack. We can also play it from the top of our deck in response to defeating a minion and get the heal.

We also hope to have The Sorcerer Supreme which gives +1 hand size in hero form giving her 6 cards every turn as well as The X-Jet which gives us a resource by exhausting it.

Set up, we can have Magik sitting at 4 base attack going up to 7 with Hand cannon and warrior skill as well as a 6 card hand size and resource generator.

Another key card in this deck is Resourceful which is an under-utilized card and typically isn't great. For Magik however, this card really shines. Top deck it guarantees the we can hit our kickers for Soul Strike or Exorcism as well as the kicker for Soulsword. It can also be played for free from top deck which gives us another resource to play with.

This is especially important to get the confuse from Exorcism to flip down and get the card draw from HoH.

Against Steady or stalwart villains, we have several allies who can help manage threat as well as our secret weapon Tempus who can be discarded when they go to scheme and you instead get an encounter card. This is really great for scenarios like ESN who has stalwart only in Giant form, this way if you have a different form confused and he swaps to Giant you are still able to avoid the scheme.

White Queen provides 2 thwart and can rid a status effect off of a character.

Shadowcat provides 2 thwart as well as ignoring icons on schemes the turn she is played.

Colossus brings 2/2 stats and can be played from top deck to block a hit during the villain phase.

We do not have many allies in the deck simply because the deck cycles very quickly between the Spiritual Meditation, card draw from HoH, Magic Attack, etc.

With so few allies, we are going to grab Exorcism most of the time with stepping disc and on our flips back to hero to keep threat in check. This has been really efficient for the deck in my plays and coupled with the ability to confuse, threat hasn't been a problem most games.

Other Considerations:

-Psylocke is great and provides the confuse that we like, but she is on the expensive side and i found myself not playing her much.

-2nd copy of Hand Cannon or Warrior Skill, opted against these as Warrior Skill can only have one out at a time. The deck also cycles quickly enough that we can typically recoup them.

-Clobber works really great for Magik since it can be played from top deck for cheaper and go to your hand if it was the first card played. I like it, but the deck feels more reliable with her attack boosting cards as opposed to looking for events to deal with minions.

-Utopia was initially in, but i dropped some allies and with the limited amount we have Utopia was no longer needed.

-For minion heavy scenarios like Zola, Mutagen Formula, etc. You may want to drop Looking for Trouble and instead have Chase them down or another copy of moment of triumph.

Overall, this deck has been a ton of fun and really successful. I would love to hear any feedback or experiences with it!